Effectively I killed my poem
like a hawk that kills the weak, the sick, the old;
Defined it by the second line
as a predator that seizes stumbling souls;
Declared its features unsubdued
like shrieks across a universal sky;
Discovered Death in stanza two
as a bird reflecting dinner in its eye,
Foreshadowing the obvious,
the destiny of creatures great and small
And celebrating the irony
of grace within three pounds of caterwaul.
Repeatedly analogies
went flying through the predatory air
Pronouncing the mortality
of all who are alive, awake, aware.
The sad thing is, I love this bird:
I watch it catch the kettles high above
On muscled wings, remote controlled,
in the spirit of the words I’m dreaming of
But never grasp: I watch it soar
untethered to the world till all I see
Is the distance of its silhouette
becoming an enigma over me:
A mystery, yet clearly made
of more than Death compressed onto a page
Of whiteness, more than irony
observed within an origami cage,
And more than all my heavy paint
can capture. Now, beyond all odes, this bird
That let me love it from afar
lives on but flies away without a word.
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